


a free agent at heart

by weird_bird (2weird4)



Category: Catwoman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: F/F, Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-05 01:23:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15159326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2weird4/pseuds/weird_bird
Summary: Never did she imagine that she would come. Cover her tattoo and bullet-wounds and dance like a stranger in an off-shoulder dress, her smile mild and her eyes burning.





	a free agent at heart

**Author's Note:**

> happy july 3rd, 2018, guys.
> 
> title from _catwoman_ #35: "interesting that a daughter of the yakuza would leave her tattoo unfinished. nothing like running across a free agent at heart."

Selina lets her legs carry her where they will, and perhaps it’s no surprise that she ends up here. Gotham summer boiled all day, and even with nightfall, the heat trapped in the concrete sends her swimming in her suit. The only relief comes in the moments when, jumping roof to roof, she sails through the air. Into the breeze, like a dandelion seed or a dream. Light. Unbound.

Unbound, at last. And here is where she lands: crouched on the balcony railing, peeking past the curtains into the sliver of black interior behind glass. Waiting. After what she nearly did, she’s almost _impatient_ to wait. Moonlight streams behind her. She will not be missed unless it is with intention.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

The sound of her voice slams into her solar plexus. Breathless, Selina crooks a smile. “Is that how you greet an old friend?” 

“Is that what I am?” Piano-player’s fingers on a killer's hand drift her hair behind her ear. Her top hangs loose enough to reveal bandages.

Selina relinquished her custody of anger on her behalf, but she lets it spark anyway. “You were considerate like one.” Never did she imagine that she would come. Cover her tattoo and bullet-wounds and dance like a stranger in an off-shoulder dress, her smile mild and her eyes burning.

At that, Eiko turns her head. “That doesn’t mean you can be here.”

“Because it’s dangerous?” Selina murmurs, gazing her fill. Her profile limned by moonlight, strong jaw, soft throat. This was the right mistake to make.

Eiko exhales into the muggy air. “You have somewhere to be in the morning.”

Selina looks back over her shoulder. His signal blares among the clouds. He’ll answer it, or he won’t. It changes nothing. Adjusting her position on the railing, she meets Eiko’s eyes again from behind her lenses. “Plans have changed.”

Eiko tenses, but it’s not at her words. Something must move in the shadows beyond Selina’s shoulder because her hand falls to the handle of her sword. “You’d better come inside.”

Moving soundlessly off the railing, Selina melts into the shadows and slips in behind her.

Quickly, Eiko slides the door closed and draws the curtains with a rattle. She stares out with suspicion across the street in the small gap, but there must be nothing to see because she snaps them all the way shut and walks backwards, turning to Selina without moving further.

“Trouble?” Selina asks. She wouldn’t have come if Eiko hadn’t taken the gamble first. It still isn’t entirely fair to Eiko, but that’s why it’s a gamble. 

“Not the worst you’ve brought into my home,” Eiko answers coolly.

Pain wrings her heart. She steps closer to her. Not close enough to touch. “How’s the family?”

“Powerful.” Her hand drops from her sword. “Well.”

Selina can count the number of times they have touched on a hand. When she kissed Catwoman. Eiko's face in her hands. When she came up the stairs, loss dragging her down until she collapsed in Eiko’s arms. Eiko’s knife at her throat. Still her presence is palpable. Makes her yearn for something that never quite was. Folding her hands behind herself (a betraying tremor of the fingers), she crosses the room, her back to Eiko. Her head bowing as she looks across her bookshelf, free of dust, spines sticking out here and there, a silk scarf spilling over the corner, weighed down by a pistol.

“What happened, Selina?” 

Selina would say _seeing you._ It’s an important part of the story, but it’s not all of it. The story: her own, and it has always been. Only for a brief time did she drop the spool. Now, winding it back, Eiko tangles the string. “Going back to my old stomping grounds helped me realize who I am.” _The Pillow Book._ Her fingertip follows the serene swoop of Sei Shōnagon’s cheek. “Who I’m not.”

An intake of breath from behind her.

Hands curling around the edge of the bookshelf, she twists around to face her. The trapped glow of moonlight reveals Eiko’s expression and none of what she thinks. A time when she could not hide from Selina was not so long ago, and yet. “I left the life--” _Ours._ “--when I knew I wasn’t myself anymore.”

“You can’t come back,” Eiko says, harsh. “You can’t lead the Calabreses again.”

They both know what this is and isn’t. This is the play. “That was never the plan.”

“Then tell me the plan,” Eiko says through clenched teeth, as if that could suffocate the spark in her eyes, “for once.”

Only once did she and Eiko play a game of Go. _Surround an opponent,_ Eiko told her, pushing her piece across a space, _and they are yours._ Before she can step forward, Eiko does, backing her into the shelf. Of a height, Selina’s boots put her just a little taller than Eiko’s bare feet. How little of her skin she’s seen. How little that matters. 

Eiko tells her, “We can’t do this.”

“We never could. You were just an optimist.” When Eiko ducks her head, Selina threads gloved fingers through her straight hair, letting it fall over the back of her hand until she can touch her temple.

“Selina, please don’t make this harder for me than it already is.” On an intellectual level, Selina knew that it would hurt her, this woman who took her identity on her shoulder, took a bullet in her shoulder, turned her shoulder with its finished tattoo and let Antonia leave. For Selina’s sake, whatever other motivations might lie above the surface. The confirmation twinges sweetly despite herself. 

Selina draws her face to her. “I’m a thief. I take what isn’t mine.” Her lips catch her gasp.

But Eiko tears the kiss in two. “I know I’m capable of many things, but this is beyond me.” What is beyond her? Not execution, _cheating._ It’s hard to laugh at where someone else draws the line, though, when that someone has seen her cross her own more than one time. “You need to go. Now.”

“I’m walking away, Eiko.” Enough of ambiguity, enough of trading in shadow. They don’t share that business anymore. “The wedding’s off.” 

First time she’s said it in so many words. The realization hits hard. As arms fly around her middle, a fierce sob claws up Selina’s chest, tears brimming.

“I did it for myself,” she whispers, “to _stay_ myself.” After all, she was the first woman she ever loved.

“Selina. Selina…” How she holds her. “Whatever you are, you are always yourself.” She was not the last. 

Whether praise or condemnation, it was what Selina needed to hear. A cry wracks her frame, and she presses her face into the crook of her neck, teeth bared against her skin. 

Jason, monitoring her dutifully from around the corner. Damian, lost, so small on the sofa, not yet ready for any of it, either. Dick, who has always understood her in a sense he’ll never admit, loyal like she never wanted to be. Tim, absent, marginal. What did quiet, lonely Cassandra think? Stephanie, who was a product of Catwomen as much as Batman? 

She doesn’t know what Alfred knew, or what he will have to say to him when he hears.

Always on their periphery, she has withdrawn from foreign grounds into her territory again, and all their walls will be stronger for it.

When she straightens, she swallows her tears. A tiny noise snags her attention, and she sees a beautiful bicolor somebody picking across the floor on small paws. “Oh, hello.”

Defensive, Eiko huffs, “Don’t laugh.” 

Kneeling, Selina scoops the little cat into her arms. “No. I’m happy for you both.”

“I thought I’d earn the moniker in retrospect.” Eiko pets her until her hand caresses down Selina’s forearm. “And the house...seemed so empty.”

That she could only crouch on a stone and watch as the dirt fell over her father--no, her regrets remain too many to number. “You earned it. But you deserved better.”

“Do you think I blame you?” Eiko wonders aloud.

Selina doesn’t answer.

“Maybe I didn’t act for myself.” Her fingers close around her wrist. Dry lips touch her forehead, and Selina closes her eyes, feels gravity. “But I chose for myself.”

Selina sets down the cat blindly and opens her eyes only when their mouths meet again, a kiss that aches as much as it soothes.

“I’ll make some tea,” Eiko suggests into the space between their lips. “You’ve been spotted, I think, so you might as well stay until I know my next move.”

“Sure,” Selina says, wrong-footed in a rare instance. She has no plan, either. She watches Eiko disappear into the darkened kitchen and looks back down at the bookshelf, flexing her foot, scuffing her boot across the floor. The padding of the cat almost knocks a book off the shelf; Selina catches it-- _Cathay._

“‘...Lowering my head, I looked at the wall,’” she’s reading to the underwhelmed (so much for erudism) cat when Eiko returns, “‘Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.’”

“You know, Pound based his translations on the notes of an American.” Eiko hands her a steaming cup. “That American learned his Chinese from a Japanese teacher.”

“The sentiment is good.” Arguing for pleasure’s sake. Selina sips the tea.

“So when is sentiment enough?” Eiko returns, gaze dark and steady, challenge well-met.

Selina’s eyebrow arches, mouth curved at a corner. “It never is.” She thumbs the rolled corner of the page. “Your copy’s seen some rereads, though.”

“Are you calling me sentimental?” And Eiko kisses her. Perhaps it’s too soon, but God, Selina will think of that when they’ve shared enough that she doesn't have to count their kisses anymore.

“I’d never slander you like that.” She looks back down at “The River Merchant’s Wife” as Eiko comes to lean against the bookshelf beside her, the bony point of her hip touching Selina’s just so. Just so. “Tell me what I can do to keep you safe.”

“High priority for you?” If it’s mockery, it’s the most hopeful she’s ever heard.

“Hazard,” Selina murmurs, “of the heart.”

Eiko’s eyelashes flicker. With her shoulder bent, she sees the gem-bright dragon swirl over the muscles of her back, interrupted only by the blocky white of the bandage Selina glimpsed before. “You should keep reading. You have a good voice for it.”

Selina never had the chance to read to her, she realizes, in handful of hours they actually spent in each other’s company. Being together for them meant, most of the time, being across the city from each other. Perhaps they don’t know yet what being together would actually mean. Perhaps they won’t ever get the chance. _And I will come and meet you and will never mind the distance._ “‘I stopped scowling.’” Selina’s brow twitches as she tries not to laugh through the words. “‘I desired my dust to be mingled with yours, forever and forever and forever.’”

Til death. Dust to dust.

No. She doesn’t know where she’s going yet, but she knows why.

**Author's Note:**

> see also ["a poem of changgan"](https://poetryfoundation.org/poems/56596/a-poem-of-changganor) and ["the river merchant's wife."](https://poets.org/poetsorg/poem/river-merchants-wife-letter)


End file.
